This month Kurt Reiner of Demiurge Studios will talk about developing “Brothers in Arms: Double Time” for the Wii in conjunction with Gearbox Software.  This project began with porting the Unreal Engine 2 engine from the Xbox to the Wii.  It then required migrating/redesigning game content as well as designing the movement and combat controls to utilize the Wii remote.   The talk will touch on the team needs for Wii development and the lessons learned from this project.

Kurt Reiner serves as Technical Director at Demiurge Studios but sometimes manages to sneak into engineering lead and programmer roles when others aren’t looking.  Kurt has been in the game industry since 1998, when he helped found Shaba Games. After Shaba, Kurt moved on to Electronic Arts. There he worked on several critical intellectual properties including Tiger Woods Golf, James Bond, and the Sims. Kurt holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from University of California at Berkeley and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.

Logistics:

Wednesday, May 14 @ 7pm
The Skellig, Waltham
You can find all the other logistical information on our “About” page.

The New England Institute of Art
Senior Portfolio Show
April 16th, 1 - 5 PM
The Brookline Holiday Inn, 1200 Beacon Street, Coolidge Corner

Come see the creative 2D and 3D work of our talented Animation seniors! Many are available for freelance or full-time work opportunities. Pre-screen future resources, or just come see some inventive demo reels.

RSVP to: Kristin Casasanto, Senior Career Advisor, Media Arts & Animation at NEiA: kcasasanto -at- aii.edu
Contact Kristin for directions or questions.

Post Mortem is coming up next week: note that the meeting is Wednesday, not Tuesday as you might guess (the Skellig was booked, sorry). Our speaker will be Alex Engel from Turbine, and here’s the info on his talk.

Title: Exploring the Exploitation of Online Games: Real Money Transactions

Description: The explosion in popularity of online games such as World of Warcraft has created a lucrative secondary market for virtual items and goods. This has caused friction between players who engage in these activities and companies who discourage it. Drawing on experience from several Massively Multiplayer games, Turbine’s Alex Engel will discuss the problems and challenges of dealing with groups that play your games for profit, not fun.

Logistics:
Wednesday April 9, 7pm
The Skellig in Waltham
Directions here: http://bostonpostmortem.org/SkelligDirections.htm

Hope to see you all!

Recently, they began to video record the talks, and they post them online.

And if you have something interesting to talk about, they are always looking for speakers. You can get an idea of what types of talks have been given by looking at the site. Links to talks from previous semesters are near the bottom.

Sorry for the short notice, but I just found out that Denis Dyack is speaking this evening (5pm) at MIT. Reposted with permission from the GAMBIT blog:

This afternoon the US GAMBIT lab is playing host to Denis Dyack, the founder and president of Silicon Knights (Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem, Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, Too Human). In addition to guest-lecturing in a game design course or two, Dyack will also be giving a presentation on Games as the Eighth Art and Engagement Theory for the MIT CMS Colloquium series. The Colloquium lecture is free and open to the public, and runs from 5-7 PM this evening in building 2-105.

From the official description at cms.mit.edu:

Denis Dyack is the founder and president of Silicon Knights. In this capacity, he oversees the creation and development of games, and continues to further the growth of the company. Dyack is a noted authority on interactive software development and offers valuable insight into the process of designing next-generation games that appeal to the masses. Under Dyack’s direction, Silicon Knights has evolved into one of the top independent interactive software developers in the world. Dyack (B. Phed, H. B.Sc, M. Sc.) founded Silicon Knights in 1992 after publishing Cyber Empires in 1991. Since that time, Silicon Knights has moved from creating PC games to premiere AAA console titles, such as Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain for the original PlayStation. Working with Nintendo as a second party, Silicon Knights created the critically acclaimed Eternal Darkness. Together with Nintendo, Silicon Knights worked with Konami to create another critically acclaimed game, Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes. Dyack and his team are currently working with Microsoft on the Too Human trilogy for the Xbox 360, and developing an exciting new game for Sega of America.

For more on Dyack and Engagement Theory, check out the related Developer’s Diary video podcast at gametrailers.com, then come down to campus and say hello!

Thank you for having me here today.

My name is Kent Quirk, from Acton, MA. I make games. I’ve been a software engineer and entrepreneur in Massachusetts for the past 25 years, and I’ve been making educational and computer games since about 1995.

The Massachusetts digital game business is not a new industry. During the 1980s, one of the top computer game companies in the world was Infocom, based in Cambridge. In the 1990s, Massachusetts grew a variety of powerhouse game developers like Looking Glass and Papyrus. Many of those former leaders are today running other game companies in Massachusetts.

During those early years, however, one of the things missing from the Massachusetts game industry was a sense of cohesion — an economy where individuals could move between different companies as their skills and the companies changed. Many developers and graduating students left Massachusetts in search of friendlier climates for game development — places like California and Texas.

Some of us wanted to change this. In 1997, a few Massachusetts game developers and I started meeting on a monthly basis. The organization that we named Boston Post Mortem has grown into a leading chapter of the International Game Developer’s Association, and we believe it to be the largest regular meeting of any local game industry group in the world. Our monthly meetings in Waltham draw between 100 and 150 local game developers and students.
We have more than 70 local game companies on our list of Boston-area game developers, from large to small. Harmonix, based in Cambridge, created two of the hottest games in recent memory — Guitar Hero and Rock Band, which together have earned more than $1 Billion in revenue.
Other companies are small but still significant. Glymetrix, based on the North Shore, is working on “serious” games to help people to manage their diabetes. Conduit Labs in Cambridge just raised $5.5 million in venture capital for casual multiplayer social games. I work for the Massachusetts office of Linden Lab, and we’ve grown from 3 people to 15 people in the last 9 months.
Worcester Polytechnic Institute has probably the best undergraduate game development program in the country — offering a multidisciplinary program that blends computer science with art, sound, music, and storytelling. Several other universities in the area are also providing graduate or undergraduate degree programs related to computer games. It’s a valid and growing area of academic research, and Massachusetts is leading the way.
The overall impact of the digital game business to the Massachusetts economy is currently estimated at more than $300 million annually, with somewhere between 1500 and 2000 employees. That’s about 4 times the size of the film production industry in Massachusetts.
And they’re good jobs — the average salary in the game business is over $77,000 a year. We’re quiet, and we don’t pollute. We take the best, the brightest, and the most creative art, music, and technology students from Massachusetts universities and give them reasons to stay in Massachusetts. Someone I hired as an intern in 1999 is now the CEO of a Massachusetts game company with 32 employees.
Game development is a significant, creative business that we really should promote in this state. This very committee is considering ways to encourage creative technical industries in Massachusetts.
Ten years of concerted effort by a lot of people has begun to create the perception that Massachusetts is a great place to make games — but it’s a recent change, and still tentative.
A bill like H.1423 sends a strongly negative message to a growing but fragile economy that Massachusetts does not want to be a friendly place to run a digital game business. This is exactly the wrong message to send. Please, I urge you to reject this bill and instead, send the message that Massachusetts not only cares about the game industry, but wants to promote it.
Thank you for your time.

Overall, I was pleased; the committee seemed attentive and interested in all 5 presentations. The ESA representative did a good job of presenting the legal issues related to such laws, along with the fiscal implications.

If you haven’t had time yet to contact your representative, there’s still time.

Kent